History 1123


Informal Writing #1

As you have seen the Flemish engraver Theodore de Bry had very distinct ideas about what Amerindians should look like that differed from what they actually looked like.  This vision he had extended to other Amerindian societies he illustrated as we can see if we look at his illustrations of the Virginia Jamestown settlement.  Our advantage here, though, is that we have a set of watercolors done by someone who was in Jamestown on which De Bry based his engravings.  Choose five of these pictures from the galary at the web-site linked to the hypertext below (being clear about which engravings you are dealing with) and, based on your examination of the images and the commentary on them, explain what you think De Bry's view of Amerindians was and how it contrasted with reality.  Here is the web-site link:

http://www.virtualjamestown.org/images/white_debry_html/jamestown.html




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